Nicolas Roudier was born in 1994 in Besançon, France. As the son of a pianoforte player, he grew up in an early music environment, surrounded by period instruments. He began modern horn at age 4 with Walter Bellagamba. In 2007 he won the first prize of the Artistic Competition of Epinal, and then studied with Pierre Moragues (former solo horn at Paris’ Opera) from 2009. In 2012, Nicolas became a student of Phil Myers (former principal horn of New York Philharmonic) in Lausanne’s HEMU, Switzerland, where he completed a Bachelor degree in 2015 and a Master degree in 2018. He then turned to historical horns and went to the Royal Conservatory of The Hague to study with Teunis van der Zwart. In 2020 he graduated with a second Master’s in Early Music, and in 2021 with the Artist’s Certificate.
Nicolas had the chance to play with some of the most renowned European orchestras and ensembles, on both modern and historical horns : Haydn Philharmonie, The Orchestra of the XVIIIth Century, Freiburger Barockorchester, Apollo Ensemble, Armonia Atenea, the Dutch National Opera, etc. He is now a regular member of Das Neue Mannheimer Orchester, based in the Netherlands. He played under the direction of Bertrand de Billy, Sir Roger Norrington, Hidemi Suzuki, René Jacobs and many others. He had the opportunity to work and play with the greatest horn players such as Radek Baborak, Hervé Joulain, Thomas Müller, Claude Maury… Apart from his playing, Nicolas also teaches privately since 2017 and discovered himself a passion for transmitting his knowledge and love for his instruments. Learn more about the teaching here.
Nicolas is especially fascinated by historical horns, their history, diversity and impact on interpretation ; his collection brings together horns from the late XVIIIth century to the present and he plays them all in concert, matching repertoire and instruments in a large panel of colours, styles and techniques. Since 2019, Nicolas Roudier plays in duo with historical keyboard player Anders Muskens to play horn and pianoforte repertoire from late classical to romanticism, in unique historically informed performances. Learn more about the Muskens-Roudier Duo here.
Nicolas is also a researcher. Following his passion for early horns and willing to expand borders, he realised in November 2019 the very first recording of a complete piece on an original horn from Mozart’s time (Anton Kerner 1760) for the purposes of his Master thesis. He was awarded several special academic prizes for his works, and appeared as a lecturer in REMA’s 2020 Early Music Summit and the 2021 Historical Brass Society Symposium. Nicolas is also currently compiling an inventory of a private collection of rare original music scores from the mid-XVIIIth century to the XIXth century. This eventually lead to the creation of his own music publishing company, Artescripta. He is the co-organizer of Les Concerts du Temps Retrouvé, a private concert series in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, France, as well as the co-founder of The Hague Historical Wind Quintet.
He was supported in his research and musical production by the Adriana Jacoba Fondation, the Countess of Bylandt Fondation and the Dutch Performing Arts Fund in Netherlands.
